“What’s a Good Conversion Rate?” 🤔 The Benchmark Myth

For as long as I can remember, marketers have asked me:

“What’s a good conversion rate for my campaign?”

And here’s the honest answer… it depends.

Conversion rate benchmarks are tricky because different brands have different goals. A KPI could be downloading a coupon, signing up for an email, opening a bank account, or even buying a car, all of which have vastly different intent levels and friction points.

The head of Marketing Analytics for one of the largest global OEMs once told me “it’s all relative to the dashboard you’re looking at. There’s a million different options and providers of data, so measuring across providers doesn’t have apples to apples comparisons. Focus on the report you trust and make everything relative to what’s within the given report.”

With that, when it comes to wanting benchmarks, try these:

✅ Instead of chasing an arbitrary benchmark, focus on relative performance.

✅ Compare Campaign A vs. Campaign B, not your brand vs. a generic industry average.

✅ If one tactic is driving a 20% higher Conversion rate, that’s an insight you can actually act on.

✅ Focus on Incrementality, if your spend is driving net new sales at a lower incremental cost per acquisition than your marketing cost, keep going

Think about it this way:

Would you rather hit an “industry average” conversion rate, or actually improve what’s working for your business?

Benchmarks can be a useful reference, but real optimization happens when you focus on your own data, your own customers, and your own goals.

#ConversionRate #MarketingMetrics #DigitalMarketing #GrowthMarketing #Advertising #Attribution #AdTech

The Who, What, and How foot traffic measurement works.

Will Google’s Ad Empire Be Broken Up?

When I first started in programmatic, 2nd price auctions ensured advertisers paid a fair market rate. You could bid confidently knowing you’d only pay a cent more than the next-highest bid.

Then, about 8-9 years ago, Google led the shift to 1st price auctions (where you pay exactly what you bid) & enabling their publishers to create dynamic bid floors (to artifically increase the clearing price). This fundamentally changed how media was bought, increasing advertiser costs while boosting Google’s profits.

My First Exposure to Googles dominance was in 2016.

A programmatic trader in Google’s DSP meant to raise their bid from $5.00 to $6.25 but accidentally entered $625. No big deal, they caught and fixed the mistake just 5 seconds later.

In that 5 seconds, the remainder of their entire 200,000 daily impression budget was spent at a CPM of over $200. What should have cost $1,200 ended up costing more than $40k.

And where did that ad spend go? Straight into Google’s ecosystem.

Keep in mind Google has Unmatched Control

Today, Google dominates every part of digital advertising:

🔎 Search ads (Google Search)

📺 Video ads (YouTube)

📈 Ad buying (DV360, the largest DSP)

📡 Ad selling (Google AdX, the largest SSP)

✅ Verification & measurement (Google Analytics, Campaign Manager 360)

🌐 The largest browser in Chrome in the US and the largest Global smart phone operating system in Android.

They own the buyer, the seller, the marketplace, devices, browser, and the referee, a level of control no other company has ever had.

Will Google’s Dominance End? We’ll get an answer this summer…

In the meantime, what can you do about it?

PSA for the day: if you’re a marketer in any DSP, don’t think twice about using AI Bidding, if you can get screwed 9 years ago in 5 seconds, just imagine what the technology is today across any entity representing publishers. Pick a DSP that only represents the buyer, and let them work for you.🤔

Anyone else have a similar experience?

#GoogleAds #AdTech #ProgrammaticAdvertising #Antitrust

The Illusion of High Lift: Why Longer Lookback Windows Matter in Incrementality Testing

Marketers love seeing high lift in incrementality studies, it feels like proof that campaigns are driving real impact. But if you’re only looking at short lookback windows (1-7 days), you might be chasing last-touch credit and overestimating effectiveness.

The Problem: Short Lookback Windows Inflate Lift

When we measure lift between 1-7 days, results look strong because ads do work, they drive awareness and may accelerate conversions. But here’s the catch:

✅ Many buyers were already on the path to purchase.

✅ Your ad may have just nudged them to buy sooner.

✅ If you extend the lookback window, the control group converts too.

Cutting off analysis too early makes it seem like your ad drove the entire conversion, when in reality, it just influenced timing.

Real-Life Example: Travel & CTV

A major travel brand ran a CTV and audio, with display retargeting campaign to drive bookings. Their 1-7 day lift study showed a big conversion increase. But at 90 days, they saw:

• People go on summer vacations, the control group converted too, just at a later time.

• Many “incremental” conversions in the short window were people who would have booked anyway.

• The true lift, those booking only because of the ad, was much lower than first thought.

This insight changed how they measured success, shifting to 60-90 day lookback windows to separate actual lift from simple purchase acceleration.

Why Longer Lookback Windows Give a More Honest View

This is critical for CTV, audio, and upper-to-mid funnel media, where the goal is awareness and long-term consideration, not instant conversion.

In high-ticket industries like travel, auto, and luxury retail, brands sometimes use 60, 90, or even 180-day windows for true impact measurement. If you only measure at 1-7 days, you’re likely capturing last-touch credit rather than real incremental lift.

What This Means for Your Marketing Strategy

🔹 Short lookback = overestimated lift. Your ad worked, but not as much as you think.

🔹 Longer lookback = a more accurate read. It shows how many would have converted anyway.

🔹 Test across different time horizons. Compare short and long-term effects.

🚀 Key Takeaway: Marketing isn’t just about driving faster conversions, it’s about driving incremental ones. Ensure your lookback windows are long enough to separate the two.

#MarketingMeasurement #Incrementality #Attribution #MediaStrategy

Relative vs. Incremental Lift: How you can Leverage Both

Let’s say you own a pizza shop, and you’re running an ad campaign to get more people ordering your delicious pies. You set up a test:

• Exposed Group: They see your ad and start craving pizza.

• Control Group: No ad seen

At the end of the campaign, let’s say your control group only sold 10 pizzas and the exposed group sold 25, for a total of 35 pizzas sold.

🍕 What can Relative vs. Incremental Lift tell you?

➡ Incremental Lift answers: “How much of my total sales actually came from the ad?”

📊 (Exposed Sales - Control Sales) / (Exposed Sales + Control Sales)

• This number is always between 0 and 1. In this case 15 incremental pizzas because of your ad out of 35 total pizzas sold, which means 43% of your total sales were actually influenced by your ad.

➡ Relative Lift answers: “How much more did the exposed group buy compared to the control?”

📊 (Exposed Sales - Control Sales) / Control Sales

• This number can be over 100%, in this case your control group only sold 10 pizzas and the exposed group sold 25, your relative lift is 150%!

🎯 The Purpose of Both Metrics

🔍 Use Relative Lift to optimize performance between tactics:

✅ Which audience, targeting, geo, or creative messaging works better?

✅ Which channels are more effective within my media mix?

✅ How do I allocate spend efficiently?

📢 Use Incremental Lift to measure true impact:

✅ Is this campaign actually driving new demand?

✅ What % of sales came because of my marketing efforts?

✅ Would these sales still happen if I didn’t run this ad?

📌 Why It Matters

In the very first iteration of measurement many years ago within Viant’s Advanced Reporting, we focused solely on Relative Lift. We learned that if you focus only on relative lift, you might be optimizing for efficiency, without knowing total impact. We then added incremental lift, which if you focus only on incremental lift, you might miss ways to fine-tune performance. We found our customers appreciate both in the same UI. Your DSP should have both as well.

📢 Bottom Line

Great marketing isn’t just about improving results, it’s about ensuring those results actually matter.

#MarketingAnalytics #Incrementality #LiftAnalysis #DigitalMarketing #AdTech #GrowthMarketing #Advertising #MarketingStrategy #Lift #AdTechAIFiles

Pod cast produced from my 8 year old son to kids of all ages. Enjoy!

In honor of International Women's Day, I wanted to recognize 2 women that have had a profound impact on my life. One of them personal, another professional.

My mom, a lifelong nurse, specializing in end-of-life care (hospice) and mid-to-late-stage cancer care, always taught me that the most important thing anyone can do in their life is to CARE, whether for a person or a cause. With 8 billion people on this planet and countless causes to #care about, we each have a limited capacity to give our energy. While I’m not always great at expressing my gratitude, one of the things I care most about is the people I surround myself with, both personally and professionally.

One practice we’ve implemented in our team meetings is a “shout-out” session. We all may think positive things about our colleagues, but we don’t always communicate them. And I’ve never met someone who doesn’t appreciate a genuine compliment. A simple gesture of appreciation can go a long way, and this few minutes is the best part of any of my meetings all month long.

As a small gesture of my appreciation, I want to take this a step further and publicly recognize a colleague I deeply respect & and has had a profound impact on my life. While I’d love to see more of this across our industry, I understand that publicly vouching for someone comes with the risk of them getting “poached”. So it hear it goes…

I have had the honor and privilege to work alongside Amanda Bookout (not on LinkedIn ATM, otherwise would have linked) for the past 15 years. Amanda is Viant’s Director of Business Intelligence. There is simply no one better in our industry that understands both the data complexities that AdTech brings and the business application of that data to bring it to life for our internal stakeholders and clients. She handles the most challenging of issues with calmness and intellect through experience. Her positive, can do attitude is infectious and I’m thankful to have been able to witness it as long as I have. Amanda‘s ability to find, hire, onboard, and develop talent is nothing sort of amazing.

For those who have ever worked with Amanda, I encourage you to show your appreciation and continue this shout-out, whether it’s through internal Slack, an email, or a comment below. I’ll compile all the comments and include them in an Amanda dedicated episode of the AdTech AI Files Podcast to round out this shout out. Let’s celebrate the people who make a difference.

Throw the image in a PPT and introduce it to your next team meeting and hashtag#measure what happens!hashtag#ShoutOut hashtag#Recognition hashtag#Teamwork hashtag#NoAI hashtag#IWD25